"You might call it a stereotype of the flawed detective with a certain set of problems in the modern world, but I think people do have certain sets of problems in the modern world that are fairly common," said Branagh during the January TV Tour in Hollywood. "But I think it seemed to me simple enough that this is a man who finds it extraordinarily difficult to cope with a very difficult job. If you discovered decapitated bodies, rotting bodies, if you encounter human violence regularly and intimately, then I think it puts you under pressure to be functioning in all other areas of your life unless you can structure it in such a way (that allows you to) leave the job at the office.

"Someone like Wallander can't. A price that he pays for that is dysfunction in the rest of his life. So I think that the two things go together in some way, just by virtue of the nature of what he has to encounter on a day-by-day basis."

Compounding that occupational hazard is Wallander "involuntary capacity" to "empathize and feel it, to be appalled," Branagh continued. "It isn't just another decapitated body. It's a life ruined or robbed, and it affects him deeply."